It’s no secret that the Stanford women’s basketball team has had an absolute stranglehold on the Pac-10 for the past decade.
It’s also no secret that Stanford has turned into ASU’s biggest out-of-state rival.
That rivalry will be renewed when the Sun Devils (16-9, 8-6) kick off their final homestand of the season with a clash with the No. 2 Cardinal (25-1, 15-0) on Thursday night at Wells Fargo Arena.
“[I’m] trying to really impress upon this young team to not wait,” ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said. “Not wait until next year, not wait until the offseason and say, ‘Yeah, I should have been playing harder.’ I have no doubt that they want to do it now.”
While there is always hype surrounding the yearly home showdown with Stanford—and the past three contests played between the two squads at Wells Fargo Arena were decided by single digits — the vibe and expectations are a bit different this year.
ASU is clearly still in a transition phase after last season’s Elite Eight run, and Stanford has maintained its position as one of the nation’s biggest powerhouses.
The Cardinal has won 16 in a row and has been outscoring its opponents by almost 24 points per game. ASU has already dropped conference games that it simply hasn’t been used to losing in the past three seasons, and senior guard Danielle Orsillo is the only current Sun Devil to beat Stanford in her career.
But the underdog position is one that Orsillo said fits her team quite well.
“We have nothing to lose and everything to gain, so we’re just going to go for it,” she said.
And when ASU first took on Stanford in Palo Alto earlier this month, it put the Cardinal in unchartered waters — for the first 20 minutes.
After leading by as many as 14 in the first half, the Sun Devils drastically fizzled after intermission and lost the contest 71-48.
“We definitely learned a lot in that game,” Turner Thorne said. “We did kind of lose it in the second half. Things weren’t going our way, and instead of kind of regrouping and locking in and playing one possession at a time, we kind of spiraled to not playing very well at either end of the floor.”
Stanford continues to be carried by its dominant inside game, as the Cardinal ranks second in the nation in rebounding margin (+13.4) and gets 49 points and nearly 30 rebounds per game from its 1-2-3 punch of sophomore Nnemkadi Ogwumike, junior Kayla Pedersen and senior Jayne Appel.
“That’s insane,” Turner Thorne said of Stanford’s rebounding statistics. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in my entire coaching career.”
It’s been Appel over the past two weeks that has shown exactly why she is the reigning Pac-10 Player of the Year, as she has averaged 20.3 points and 12.3 rebounds during her past four games to garner back-to-back Pac-10 Player of the Week honors.
It will be a platoon of Sun Devils attempting to slow that trio of players down, as senior Kayli Murphy and junior Becca Tobin, despite the fact that they’ve had great seasons, are undersized.
ASU could receive a lift Thursday night if junior guard Tenaya Watson is back in the starting lineup. She returned to practice Tuesday after missing the past three games with a foot injury.
If ASU’s second contest against Cal is anything like the first go-around, the fans at Wells Fargo Arena are in for a treat, as ASU came from 10 points down with three minutes to go to beat the Golden Bears 63-61 on a baseline jumper by Orsillo with less than a second left.
“They have a bitter taste in their mouth — I’m sure they’re not happy about it,” Orsillo said. “We need to be ready right when the whistle blows.”
Saturday’s contest will also mark the final regular-season home game for three ASU seniors in Orsillo, forward Kayli Murphy and guard Gabby Fage, who each advanced to the NCAA Tournament every year they were in the program, including a pair of Elite Eight runs.
“Certainly, they’ve had a lot of success in terms of wins and losses, but they’ve been a lot more than that,” Turner Thorne said. “I think that they’re going to leave great legacies for our younger players in terms of what it takes. It’s not just about winning losing here, it is really about being a great Sun Devil and being a giver.”
Reach the reporter at gina.mizell@asu.edu
